Far Far Away

Winter stars (in the northern hemisphere) rise in a dark night of Alborz Mountains. The Milky Way is visible through patchy clouds and the elongated zodiacal light is notable on the left, stretching toward the Milky Way along the ecliptic. The red line is made by someone walking with a red flashlight, perhaps toward Sirius, the brightest star in the Earth night sky. Its a neighboring star to our sun “only” 8 light years away, still far enough that it takes over a hundred thousand years to reach it by today fastest spacecrafts! Notable in the background sky of this image is the Winter Hexagon; a celestial asterism with vertices at Sirius (lower right, in Canis Major), Rigel (right, at the foot of Orion), Aldebaran (upper right, in Taurus), Capella (upper left, in Auriga), the pair of Pollux/Castor (left, at the head of Gemini or the Twins), and Procyon (lower left, in Canis Minor).